Rogue's Reform

by Marilyn Pappano

  She didn’t know whether she loved Ethan or merely felt grateful to him, whether he cared for her or merely felt responsible.

  He closed the curtains, then tucked the covers around her before stretching out beside her. “Do you want me to wake you for dinner?”

  She shook her head. “If I get hungry, I’ll wake up.”

  “Do you want me to go home?”

  After a brief hesitation, she shook her head again. It was the right answer for him. It made the corners of his mouth curve up just a little. He kissed her forehead, brushed his hand across her cheek, then rose from the bed. “I’ll be downstairs or in Annie’s room if you need anything. Good night, babe.”

  Lifting her head from the pillow, she stopped him in the doorway. “Ethan? Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  “You’re welcome.” Then… “Get some rest, darlin’. I’ll check on you later.”

  Knowing that he would check on her made it easy for her to follow his orders. She snuggled into the covers that smelled of him and dozed off.

  When she awakened again, it was morning. The sun was shining, the curtains were open again, and music was coming from down the hall. She rolled over to see the alarm clock on the opposite night table, then sat bolt upright. Eleven o’clock! She’d practically gotten that twenty-four-hour nap she’d claimed she could use. She felt like a slug—though an incredibly well-rested one.

  “Hey, sleepyhead.” Wearing old jeans, a stained T-shirt and a smear of white paint across one cheek, Ethan stood in the doorway. “It’s about time you woke up. How do you feel?”

  “Lazy.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s you. Grace Prescott, slacker. Are you hungry?”

  “Starved. Annie and I don’t often miss one meal. We’ve never skipped two in a row.”

  “Then get up and get dressed. I’m taking you out for lunch today.”

  Feeling suddenly wary, she slid so she could sit with the headboard at her back and kept the covers over the lower half of her body. “Where?”

  “I thought we’d eat at Shay’s place.”

  “I don’t think so.” She didn’t eat at the Heartbreak Café often under the best of circumstances. The small diner was more or less the heart of Heartbreak. Everyone with time to sit and talk passed it at the café. That was where you went if you wanted the latest news, weather or gossip, and since she was the latest gossip…

  “I do think so. We’ve got to face these people, Grace. If we don’t, they’ll just keep talking.”

  “They’ll keep talking, anyway.”

  “Come on, Grace. You can’t hide out forever. Then they’ll really have reason to talk about the crazy lady who lives at the end of the lane and never comes out in daylight.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and skeptically asked, “It really doesn’t bother you?”

  The teasing light disappeared from his eyes and grimness took its place. “Hell, yes, it bothers me, but you know what, Grace? It’s a fact of life. Whenever your life is more interesting than everyone else’s, they’re going to talk about it. Whenever life is slow and dull, which in Heartbreak is all the time, they’re going to look for someone to discuss. For large parts of my life, it’s been me. Before that, it was my father. Guthrie’s had his share of gossip. So have Shay and Easy and Reese Barnett. Hell, for that matter, so have you. The difference is, the rest of us ignore it. Maybe it’s uncomfortable. Maybe it hurts. But we don’t let it ruin our lives.”

  “Ignore it? If it were that easy, Ethan, don’t you think I’d do it?” she demanded. “I’m not like you, Guthrie and the others. That’s part of the problem.”

  Mindful of his paint-stained clothes, he crouched beside the bed, pulled her hand free and laced his fingers with hers. “You’re just like us, darlin’, only a little more shy. You haven’t quite mastered that go-to-hell attitude that you need to deal with these people.”

  She didn’t want to smile, but she couldn’t help it. The idea of her telling anyone to go to hell was just so ludicrous. She’d never been disrespectful to anyone in her entire life…even though they had, on numerous occasions, been disrespectful to her.

  “Surprise ’em, Grace,” Ethan urged. “They expect you to endure this new round of talk like the same shy little mouse you always were. Don’t. Look ’em in the eye and tell ’em it’s none of their damn business.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Of course you can.”

  She shook her head. “Lightning would strike me dead if I even tried.”

  He grinned boldly. “Honey, I’ve been telling them that for fifteen years and I haven’t been struck down yet.”

  Freeing her hand from his, she stroked his blond hair back from his forehead. “I’m not like you, Ethan. I care what they think.”

  “I care, too. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking I don’t. But you can’t let what others think of you determine how you live your life.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk. Everything you do can somehow be traced back to Guthrie. You came back here when you found out I was pregnant because Guthrie would have thought it was the right thing to do. You’re willing to marry me—” she pretended not to hear the catch in her voice “—because that’s what he would do.”

  His fingers tightened fractionally around hers, and his expression, for one instant, became distant and remote. Then he released her hand and stood up with a careless gesture. “I’m not making some great sacrifice in offering to marry that poor, pitiful Prescott girl, Grace. Even in the beginning, the first time I asked, I thought the sacrifice would be yours, not mine. I want to marry you. I want to live with you and raise our baby with you.”

  “For how long?”

  His jaw tightened, his mouth thinning in a frustrated line. “I can’t give you guarantees, Grace.”

  “Of course not.”

  He ignored her. “I could die tomorrow.”

  “But it’s more likely that you’d get bored and pack up and leave. Life here is slow and dull, remember? You just said it yourself. And when things are dull, you move on. It’s what you’ve done since you were fifteen.” Watching the tension streak through him, she regretted her words—heavens, she regretted the entire conversation—but she couldn’t take them back, couldn’t soften them. His leaving was one of her biggest fears. She couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. She couldn’t pretend, as he did, that everything would somehow turn out all right if they just believed strongly enough.

  “Sometimes people change,” he said flatly. “Unlike you. You’ve got everyone convinced that you have changed, but down inside you’re still the same scared little Grace, and you’re still living in a miserable little prison. It’s different from the one your father kept you in, but it’s a prison all the same. One where only you and your baby matter. Where you don’t have to trust anyone. You don’t have to believe in anyone. You don’t have to take any risks, any chances.”

  “I’ve taken plenty of risks with you!”

  He shook his head stubbornly. “How? By meeting with me only in private? By having an affair with me in secret? By only being seen in public with me an hour away from here where no one will know? By demanding that I deny my own child? By lying to all those friends whose opinions mean so damn much to you, telling them that I’m just an old friend, that I’m around only because I’m doing some work for you, that I couldn’t possibly be important to you?”

  Grace pushed the covers back and left the bed. Though her nightgown fell to her knees, she pulled on her robe, too, just for the extra comfort it offered. “You—you are important to me, Ethan,” she said quietly, awkwardly. “Don’t you see that that’s part of the problem?”

  His thin smile cut her. “First I’m a stigma. Now I’m a problem. Well, hell, who said we weren’t making progress?”

  She wanted to crawl back into bed and cry, almost as much as she wanted to stamp her foot and shriek, or slap that cold sarcasm away. Instead, she went to th
e closet and yanked out the dowdiest of her old dresses. After taking underwear from the dresser, she turned to face him. “Get cleaned up so we can get some lunch.”

  The look he gave her was almost enough to make her wilt. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Well, I am, so get ready.” With that she flounced down the hall to the bathroom, where she tried to slam the door but managed only a firm click.

  When she came out, hair combed, teeth brushed, but without makeup, he was waiting at the foot of the stairs. He’d changed into clean clothes and scrubbed away the paint, but he was still coldly angry. Fine. So was she.

  They arrived at the Heartbreak Café in time to join the other Sunday dinner early birds. Once the church bells started ringing, every seat in the place would fill up and the overflow would line up outside to await their own tables. Grace knew this from talk, not because she’d ever eaten Sunday dinner there. In fact, this was the first time she’d walked through the door in a long time—the first time she’d ever walked through with a man.

  And the response was every bit as bad as she’d dreaded. There were a few diners who glanced up, only vaguely curious, then returned to their meal or their companions, and there were some who actually stared as she and Ethan walked past. She even caught a whisper—The father of that baby…. Whoever would have believed it?—from one booth, though she couldn’t bring herself to look and see who had spoken.

  Her face burning, she slid into the last booth, taking the side where she could face the wall. Ethan sat down opposite her and pulled the table closer to give her a little breathing space. She’d rather have taken her space under the table, out of sight of prying eyes.

  The waitress who approached with a pot of coffee was as curious as the others. “Hi, Grace,” she said, greeting her with a smile before turning to Ethan. “You probably don’t remember me, but I’m Amalia Parker. Used to be Gibson. I was a year behind you in school.”

  She said it so easily, so naturally, that Grace was immediately envious. If she’d even tried to talk to Ethan like that in the bar that summer night, she would have swallowed her tongue.

  “Hi. Uh, no coffee, Amalia,” he said. Though Grace was staring at her menu, she knew he was smiling, just a bit, just to be polite.

  “So…Grace, we all heard the news.” Amalia smiled broadly as she brushed her fingers over Grace’s arm. “I told those old men there was no way it was Leroy. Even you had better taste—I mean, even the old you—I mean…” Taking a noisy breath, she rushed on. “I’d better make the rounds with this coffee. I’ll be back in a minute to take your orders. Special today is roast with all the trimmings. I’ll be back.”

  In the unusual silence that had settled over the dining room, Grace could hear the buzz of whispers, along with a few soft murmurs. For all she knew, they could be talking about the weather or personal business of their own, but she couldn’t stop the nagging fear that she and Ethan were the topic of every whisper, every murmur. When she got proof a few minutes later in another loud-enough-to-carry comment—Any girl he wants…. What in the world did he see in her?—she wanted to duck her head and slink out.

  Ethan glared fiercely at the woman who’d spoken, then reached across the table to grab Grace’s hand. “Hold your head up,” he demanded in a low voice. “Don’t you dare let them make you cry.”

  “I’m not going to cry,” she said, but with her chin on her chest, he had to strain to hear. But when the woman’s companion responded—Well, we know the only reason he’s coming around now—a tear escaped the corner of her eye.

  His first impulse was to confront both women, but rudeness in response to rudeness rarely accomplished anything. His second was to pull Grace to her feet and walk out, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything, either. He was saved from having to come up with a third option by an unlikely source.

  Sometime in the last few minutes, Reese Barnett had entered the café, and apparently he’d heard the remarks. He hung his Stetson and uniform jacket on the rack behind the door, then strolled the length of the dining room, making a show of greeting diners left and right. “How are you doing, Mona? Everything going okay, Jake? Earl, I hear your prize mare delivered a fine filly.” He stopped at the next-to-the-last booth. “Miz Taylor. And the other Miz Taylor. Church let out early this morning? Or did you figure you could do your souls more good gossiping here at the café?”

  One of the women sputtered. The other didn’t waste a moment’s breath. “You know, Reese Barnett, we put you in the sheriff’s office. We can take you out.”

  “Now, don’t go adding to your list of sins this Sunday morning, Miz Taylor. You didn’t vote for me, and the whole county knows it. It was an honor not receiving your vote.” Amid chuckles from a few other diners, he came to their booth and nudged Ethan on the shoulder. “Slide over there. Let me join you for a cup of coffee.”

  Ethan watched Grace dab embarrassedly at her eyes as he moved to sit beside her. When she thought she’d covered the evidence of her teariness, she looked up and offered the sheriff a wan smile. It wasn’t much—she’d given Ethan better ones a hundred times—but it still affected him like a kick in the gut.

  “Hi, Reese.”

  “Grace.” Barnett fixed his gaze on Ethan. “You lied to me.”

  “Oh, gee, a James lying to a cop. Who would have expected it?” The sarcasm made Ethan feel about six years old. The jealousy made him feel about a hundred and six. But hell, Reese Barnett was exactly the sort of man Grace wanted and needed. Doing nothing more than sitting there, he was a living, breathing reminder to Grace of how short Ethan fell of every mark.

  “I didn’t expect it,” Barnett said. “I thought you were telling the truth.”

  “I was telling you Grace’s truth. Mine is a little different.”

  “So whose truth is true? Yours, hers or Pete’s?”

  “Pete’s pretty accurate. You can probably go with his.”

  In the silence that followed Ethan’s reply, the two women behind them left. Once Barnett had mentioned their name, Ethan had been able to place the outspoken one. She considered her family Heartbreak’s social elite and the arbiters of class and good taste. But Inez Taylor wouldn’t know class or good taste if it bit her on the butt, his mother had always claimed. Once again, time had proved her right.

  After the waitress brought coffee for the sheriff and took their orders, Barnett directed his conversation to Grace. “You can’t listen to anything the Taylor sisters-in-law say, Grace. No one else does, not even the Taylor brothers. They’re petty, small-minded and mean-spirited. Inez wanted to make a complaint last fall against Easy because he wasn’t appropriately grateful for her daughter’s sympathy for the poor Indian cripple.”

  And it was a fair bet Easy had told the daughter so in plain, simple terms an idiot could understand. But Grace couldn’t do something like that. She’d tried to crawl inside herself to hide. Ethan wished she was less sensitive, then immediately rephrased it. He wouldn’t change a thing about her—except to give her faith in him. He wished he was less worthy of gossip and more worthy of her. He wished he’d aimed for less notoriety in his past and for more anonymity. He wished he was a man she could be proud of.

  “Back when people ignored me, I thought it would be nice to be the center of attention from time to time,” she said, trying to sound as if it were no big deal. “But being ignored really wasn’t so bad. I could go back to that again.”

  “You will,” Ethan assured her, daring to reach under the cover of the table to clasp her hand. He half expected her to pull away and was grateful when she didn’t. “Something more interesting will come along and they’ll forget all about you. Even I can’t stay front and center in the gossip for very long and, believe me, I’ve tried.”

  She smiled that weak little smile again but didn’t look convinced.

  After that, Barnett changed the subject and kept the conversation going, but neither Ethan nor Grace had much to contribute. Neither of them had much of an appetite, either. S
he merely picked at her meal, wishing, he knew, that she was anyplace else but there, probably with anyone else but him. But when the time came to leave, she suddenly looked as if she planned to take up residency in the booth.

  It was the line of people waiting for a table, he knew, that made her nervous. He wanted to slide his arm around her shoulders, to clear the way for her and block anyone from even looking closely at her, much less speaking to her, but in the end, it was Barnett who cleared the way, who blocked everyone’s view of her and distracted anyone interested in chatting with his own conversation. He walked to the truck with them and helped Grace inside before Ethan had a chance. Barnett even made her smile again with something he said as Ethan circled the truck to climb behind the wheel.

  As he waited for a chance to back out of the parking space, he asked, “You like him a lot, don’t you?”

  “Reese? He’s been a good friend. When my father threw me out, he found me a place to stay. He and the lawyer down the street persuaded Jed to give me the store and the house when he left town.”

  “And how did they do that?” Ethan asked, struggling to control the sarcasm. Barnett was just damn near perfect, as far as she was concerned. He’d given her nothing but help, while Ethan had brought her nothing but trouble…and the baby.

  “Blackmail, I think, is the technical term for it.” The memory lightened the worry that seemed permanently etched on her face. “They went to my father and pointed out that, in hitting me, he was guilty of assault, and the fact that he was so much bigger than me and I was pregnant made it felony assault. They reminded him of all the people who witnessed it, and suggested that the best way to avoid arrest and certain conviction was to leave town and leave the store and the house to me.”